


Five Times Tony’s reaction did NOT justify withholding information Plus One time when it did

by Kizmet



Series: Interview Cannon Sucks [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dark!Tony, Gen, Not Steve Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 21:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12803229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: No matter what the circumstances were when Tony learned about his parents’ murder he wasn’t going to react well… But what does reacting badly look like if Tony’s not informed while Bucky’s in the room and Tony is basically wearing a weapon?  So...





	Five Times Tony’s reaction did NOT justify withholding information Plus One time when it did

**Author's Note:**

> #5 is a little borderline but...

**1) Invitation**

While Natasha dealt with the political fallout from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall and the data that they had released Steve prepared to deal with some fallout closer to home. First he put in a call to Colonel Rhodes and Ms. Potts urgently requesting their presence at the Tower. Rhodes was deployed but given what he and Natasha had leaked Steve knew he couldn’t risk Tony finding out some other way, so as much as he hated to do it, Steve used his pull as Captain America and got Rhodes an emergency leave. That fact alone was more than enough to bring both Rhodey and Pepper running.

“What’s this about?” Pepper demanded, barely caring that Steve was still sporting bandages from his last confrontation with the Winter Soldier.

Steve shook his head, “It’s Tony I’ve got to tell. I wanted you on hand for emotional support, I really don’t know him that well.”

Rhodes and Pepper traded a worried look. “He’s in the home theater,” Pepper said. She glanced towards the ceiling, “J.A.R.V.I.S., we’ll be in the kitchen if we’re needed.”

“Of course, Miss,” a disembodied voice replied making Steve startle. Steve squared his shoulders and walked through the door that opened for him. 

Tony sat on a couch with his feet elevated and a brace around his ribs. There were a half dozen tablets scattered around him and the large screen TV was split into multiple views. Steve caught a glimpse of several lists, respectively headed: casualties, HYDRA, families and MIA. “Hill, Rodriguez’s team is clean and fit for duty,” Tony was saying as Steve entered. He waited for Maria Hill’s confirmation then gave Steve an irritated look, “A little forewarning and I could have made all this unnecessary.”

“I didn’t want to put you in the middle of something when you were barely out of surgery,” Steve said. “I didn’t want to put any additional stresses on you.”

Tony snorted, he gestured around himself, “Well that was some brilliant tactical planning,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “So what was important enough for you to tell me despite my delicate condition?”

Steve bit back the impulse to respond to Tony’s provocation. “I learned something about Howard, Tony. His death wasn’t an accident. It was HYDRA.”

Tony shook his head even as his fingers flew over the nearest tablet. “Dad and I fought that night,” Tony argued, “He was angry, driving recklessly. He killed my mom.”

“Tony, no,” Steve protested, eyes widening in shock. “It was HYDRA, they murdered your parents.”

Tony froze, staring at something he’d brought up on his tablet. 

“There’s something else,” Steve continues. “They might have used the Winter Soldier to do it. Tony, you have to understand, it wasn’t his fault. He was brainwashed, he had no choice.”

“Sergeant Barnes?” Steve heard Howard’s voice coming from Tony’s device, older, pained but still recognizable and froze. A few moments later Tony looked up from the screen, his eyes were black with rage, “I’m going to kill him. J.A.R.V.I.S., armor,” he demanded, standing slowly.

“I’m sorry sir but you destroyed all your armors,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replied blandly. 

“Then fabricate a new one!” Tony snapped.

“It wasn’t his fault!” Steve exclaimed grabbing Tony’s shoulders.

“Rogers, get the fuck off me!” 

“Tones, sit your ass down and hear the man out!” Rhodes commanded. Then Pepper added, “Before you break your brand new, still healing sternum.”

Tony sat.

“It wasn't him, Tony. Hydra had control of his mind!” Steve exclaimed.

“Okay, on second thought, you get out,” Rhodes ordered, giving Steve a shove towards the door.

It would be nearly a week before Steve saw Tony again, when he did Tony had a pinched look to his face and black circles under his eyes. “I’ve got a list of HYDRA bases and I’ll have armor in another two weeks,” Tony said. “You feel like maybe cutting off a few heads with great prejudice?”

 

**2) Setting**

It was several months after the fall of HYDRA when Steve found some information on the Winter Soldier while they were raiding a base, searching for Loki’s Scepter. It wasn’t much, just a requisition for the Fist of HYDRA’s use dated December of 1991, but it made it harder to ignore the possibility that it had been Bucky that HYDRA had used to murder Howard Stark and his wife.

Steve waited until the mission was done and they were back at the Tower. Tactically, telling Tony something bound to compromise him emotionally while he was in the field, not to mention in control of as much firepower as the Iron Man armor was a terrible idea. The morning after the mission ended Steve staked out the coffee machine until Tony put in an appearance. Then Steve procrastinated until Tony was on his second cup, reasoning that it would be better if Tony were properly awake for this conversation.

Tony stood up, “Well, the Widow Bites won’t upgrade themselves.”

“Tony wait,” Steve called.

“Yeah what?” Tony asked warily.

Steve took a deep breath, “I found something about the Winter Soldier at that base.”

Tony’s gaze sharpened, “You’ve got a lead on your buddy Barnes and want to get somewhere tracking it, for once, so you’re asking me to do something utterly awesome? I can handle that, I mean what, it only took you six months to ask me? I think I’m hurt, either you don’t trust me or you don’t think I’m awesome and I know I’ve given more than enough evidence of my general awesomeness-”

“It’s about December, 1991,” Steve broke in.

Tony broke off abruptly, mouth hanging open.

Steve ran a hand through his hair, “I think HYDRA may have used the Winter Soldier to kill your parents.”

“My parents died in an accident,” Tony said numbly. “Dad was driving too fast, mad at me, hit a patch of ice and lost control.”

Steve shook his head. He took Tony’s arm and tried to steer him toward a chair. Tony jerked his arm away, “I guess that explains why you didn’t trust me. How long did you know?”

“I don’t know,” Steve objected sternly. “Arnim Zola decided to gloat, he told us Howard’s accident wasn’t an accident, implied… I still don’t know, but it’s possible that it was the Winter Soldier.” 

Tony spun on his heel, putting his entire body weight behind it, he punched Steve in the jaw. Steve’s head rocked back, Tony’s hand cracked ominionously. “Goddamn! Fuck that hurts!” Tony swore, clutching his hand to his chest.

Steve rolled his eyes in annoyance, “Feel better?” he asked dryly. 

“Hell no! Fuck! I think I broke something,” Tony exclaimed glaring at Steve, “God, I despise you.”

“Even if it was Bucky, it wasn’t his fault. HYDRA had control of his mind.” 

“Let me make one thing clear,” Tony spat still cradling his broken hand. “You use any of my resources to try to help the bastard that murdered my mom and I withdraw all support from the Avengers.”

Several months passed, there were more HYDRA bases to raid. Tony and Steve didn’t talk apart from the bare minimum necessary for missions. Steve rebuffed attempts from Natasha, Clint and Thor to talk to him about what had happened between him and Tony. He wondered if Tony was getting the same treatment but didn’t ask. Then one morning Tony stomped into the gym, he slammed a tablet down on a bench near Steve’s reinforced punching bag. “Here, the Manchurian Candidate’s in Belarus. He’s got trigger words, HYDRA can reactivate him if they catch him. Lock him up, be his personal guard, put him back on ice, I do not care but make damn sure he doesn’t rack up any more victims.” 

Tony started to walk away, then paused, “Fair warning: If you can’t get him under control? If he starts killing again? I will put him down like a rabid dog.“ 

**3) Knowledge**

The Avengers had just finished cleaning out yet another HYDRA base with no sign that the scepter had ever been there. Tony clumped over, still in the armor, and slumped against the wall next to Steve. “I think that’s a new record,” he said. “No gold metal but we cleared a HYDRA base in under an hour. We ought to post the footage on line, like those video game speed runs. What do you think?”

Steve let the torrent of words wash over him, “We are coming together as team,” he said. 

Tony grinned, “I’m thinking about instituting a movie night. It’s a crime how much pop culture you and Thor are missing out on. Even Brucie-bear, with his years of living in the back-end of nowhere schtick.”

“Tony,” Steve broke in impulsively. “Natasha and I found something you should know.”

“Hit me,” Tony replied.

“The accident that killed your parents? It wasn’t an accident,” Steve said. “It was a HYDRA hit.”

Tony shook his head, “The police told me he was driving too fast, he hit a patch of ice and lost control. We’d fought, Dad was always a reckless driver when he was angry.”

Steve took a deep breath, “There’s more, it’s possible HYDRA might have used the Winter Soldier.”

“The Winter- Your friend Barnes?” Tony pulled away from Steve.

Steve’s enhanced hearing let him overhear J.A.R.V.I.S. on the private line between the AI and Tony, “Sir, I have found an autopsy report for your mother among the data leaked from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files: Cause of death listed as manual strangulation.”

The face plate snapped shut and Iron Man blasted off but not quite quickly enough. Steve managed to grab his ankle and yanked him out of the sky. “It wasn’t him!” 

Iron Man kicked Steve off him and shot a pair of shackles at his legs. It only took a few moments for Steve to use his shield to smash the shackles to pieces but Iron Man was long gone.

Steve spent the following weeks desperately searching for both Tony and Bucky, needing to find one or the other before they found each other. The other Avengers, along with Colonel Rhodes and Sam Wilson joined in the search for Tony. Pepper tried to reason with him via J.A.R.V.I.S.

Then, one afternoon, the Avengers trudged back to the Tower to find a battered, dented armor on the landing pad. Cautiously they crept inside. Tony sat in the middle of the kitchen trying to stitch up a gash on his forearm. “Дурак несчастный” Natasha muttered, “You unlucky idiot.” She took possession of the first aid kit and passed the needle over to Bruce.

“Turns out HYDRA’s making Enhanced these days,” Tony said conversationally. “I ran into one of their pet projects, twins who take personal issue with me. Turns out a weapon I made killed their parents.” He glanced at Steve, “Funny thing, it reminded me that you blame the guy pulling the trigger, not the gun. J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

A holographic display popped up over Tony’s cellphone, where it lay on the kitchen table. The display showed a grizzled older man with long dark hair sneering at the camera, “Meet Lev Morozov, the Winter Soldier’s handler from 1977 to 1993. He’s a real piece of work. Some of the handlers let your pal just do his job. Barnes was a sniper originally and it’s still his preferred MO, distant, clean, no witnesses, no collateral. While this Morozov had him? Hands on, bloody,” Tony looked straight at Steve, “My mom wasn’t the only one, this guy made your pal kill innocents, women, children, with his bare hands. So… You want a piece of him?” 

**4) (Empathetic) Response**

“Another day, another HYDRA base and still no glow-stick of destiny,” Tony groused over an open comm line. 

“Chatter,” Steve reprimanded automatically although he didn’t really mind it. Especially since the fighting was over. Tony and Maria Hill’s former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had moved on to scouring the base for data, leads on the Scepter and anything else HYDRA might have been up to. Natasha was trying to settle the Hulk while Clint and Thor stood by in case the new lullaby she was trying didn’t work. 

“My god, is that a Macintosh Classic? I’m feeling nostalgic.”

“Iron Man, you’d better be in your armor,” Steve cautioned. Tony had a bad habit of leaving the armor to do detail work during the investigation. Steve wished the genius would get it through his head that, outside of the armor, he was essentially a civilian. While they were searching the bases there was always the danger of triggering a trap or stumbling on an enemy agent who’d managed to hide from the initial sweep. At least the incessant chatter kept them appraised of Tony’s health. 

“It’s right behind me, Mom,” Tony’s eye-roll was audible over the line. “A VHS library, must be a friend of yours Cap, this guy is really old school. Home movies? Wonder what HYDRA heads like to memorialize. Labeled by… date?” Tony’s voice broke off a strangled note that started Steve moving toward his teammate’s position. 

“I know that road,” Tony murmured several minutes later. He sounded entranced, stunned. 

Steve broke into the office just as the armor closed up around Tony. On the screen behind him was a frozen image of Bucky, the Winter Soldier, his hand locked around an older woman’s throat.

“I’m going to kill him,” Tony growled.

“It wasn't him, Tony. Hydra had control of his mind!” Steve exclaimed as he block the door.

Tony stopped and turned toward Steve, his eyes wide and wild, “You knew.” 

It wasn’t a question and Steve found himself unable to voice that he hadn’t known HYDRA had used the Winter Soldier, not for sure. “This isn't gonna change what happened.”

“I don't care. He killed my mom!” Tony exclaimed. He lunged at at Steve and the two traded blows, smashing through walls and over turning bookshelves until…

“NO!” the Hulk grabbed Steve and Tony by the back of their necks and forcibly separated them. 

“True, this does not seem a meet time for a spar,” Thor observed.

“It wasn’t Bucky,” Steve reiterated, appealing to the assembled Avengers to understand that truth. “HYDRA had control of his mind.”

“He killed my mom!” Tony repeated. 

The Hulk made a sad noise as he dropped Steve and squeezed Tony in a hug that made everyone glad Tony was wearing his armor. “Oh, okay, I think that’s going to leave dents,” Tony complained but, almost unwillingly, he found himself leaning into the hug. 

Thor eyed the Hulk warily, but the green behemoth only grumbled a bit when he reached up to clasp the back of Tony’s neck sympathetically. “Had news of my mother’s death been withheld from me I would have taken it very poorly,” he stated giving Steve a dark look.

“I thought I’d just be opening up old wounds,” Steve protested. 

Natasha examined Steve from beneath her lashes, “Lying to yourself never serves any useful purpose,” she said. “Telling Stark would have done nothing but cause problems for the team. So we didn’t tell him. I should have calculated in the was a chance he’d find out on his own.” 

The Hulk bared his fangs at her and squeezed Tony more tightly. “Master Hulk,” JARVIS announced, “While the sediment is thoroughly appreciated you are compromising Sir’s ability to breath.” 

The Hulk’s eyes widened in alarm and he began to shrink. “HOME,” he stated forcibly steering Tony away from the others as he returned to Bruce. 

“Gotta say, the green guy’s making sense,” Clint said. “And arguing with him… Well, that never makes sense… Nat? Why don’t you and Steve hitch a ride with Hill’s folks after they’re done.” He took over steering Tony back onto the quinjet when the transformation’s exhaustion hit Bruce. Thor swept after them with a last glower at Steve and Natasha. 

J.A.R.V.I.S. had called in Pepper, Rhodey and Happy even before the video finished playing. Pepper and Happy were waiting at the Tower when the Quinjet touched down and Rhodey joined them the next day. Natasha vanished, to Clint’s farm, to suffer through a number of disappointed looks from Laura Barton, although no one else on the team knew where she’d gone. Steve crashed at Sam Wilson’s for a few weeks, putting his trusting in daily calls from Clint that Tony was not going after Bucky.

Three weeks after the disclosure Bruce showed up at Sam Wilson’s with a tablet. “I would have brought the VHS tapes from Morozov’s office but there were enough that it would have take me several trips to bring them in from the car,” he said as he sat across Sam’s kitchen table from Steve and hit play. 

Sam hovered behind Steve’s shoulder. “What’s all this about?” he asked. Steve flinched and looked away from the video rather than watch his Bucky smash in a small child’s skull.

“The Winter Soldier, James Barnes,” Bruce said. “Morozov liked taping his hits, kept them as some kind of sick trophies.” He turned to Steve, “I empathize with Barnes. If General Ross had his way, that’d be the Hulk, his own personal monster on a leash. But Barnes is out there somewhere and we have no idea what his mental state is. Steve, I know this is hard for you to hear, but can you honestly tell me that the man you knew, back in Brooklyn. Can you tell me he wouldn’t want you to put a stop to this? No matter what you had to do?” 

Back in New York Clint squirmed through an air vent and let himself into Tony’s lab with a whispered, “Thank you,” to J.A.R.V.I.S. for not activating any security measures. “After Loki it was easy for you to call everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. who was making my life miserable assholes,” he said. “After all, I didn’t kill anyone you cared about while that bastard had me.”

“You were over it. I watched you put up with every crap test S.H.I.E.L.D. had or could make up to prove that you were in control of your own mind again,” Tony said. “I find it personally offensive when people ignore the data that is staring them in the face.

“The last time anyone saw Barnes he was helping HYDRA enact a plot to kill over seven hundred thousand people. Sure smart money’s on him pulling Cap out of the river but do the math: there’s enough human left in him to keep him from killing one particular guy, not enough to get in the way of him killing seven hundred thousand people. It wasn’t Old Yeller’s fault either but they still shot the rabid mutt.”

“Only after giving the dog every chance of coming through, even when they knew it’d take a miracle for him not to be infected,” Clint returned. “You’re the futurist, shouldn’t you be the one trying to invent a cure for rabies? Kill the thing that killed your mom, not carrier.”

Another week passed. The Avengers assembled for the purpose of bring in James Barnes and making certain that he didn’t represent a danger to himself or others. Steve and Tony watched each other warily, both with eyes full of a mixture of guilt and anger. 

“I am, in part jealous of you Captain,” Thor stated. “Your brother was coerced into the foul acts he performed… And there is yet hope that he may be restored. I will appeal to Odin All-Father to extend to him Asgard’s healers. We gave up hope that anything decent remained within Loki but in his death he proved us wrong. I will ask Odin, in Loki’s name, to offer your brother what aid we may offer so that another is not prematurely forsaken.” 

**5) Strategy**

If there was one thing Tony Stark excelled at it was putting up a good front. So he went to the newly commissioned Avenger’s Compound. He smiled at Wanda and wished her well in her new career as an Avenger. He joked with Thor and Steve. He gave notice of his retirement from the team and drove away leaving Steve with the belief that everything was fine.

Everything was not fine. After the Mandarin he’d taken Harley’s advice and talked to someone... Then he took Bruce’s advice and talked to that kind of doctor. Tony had let himself believe that it worked. He had gone on dozens of missions with the Avengers without needing some kid to talk him through a panic attack. He was able sleep beside Pepper again without being a danger to her. Then Sokovia happened. Ultron happened.

Tony more than half suspected that what happened in Strucker’s secret lab had been the witch and not a simple flashback. But it didn’t really matter. Either conventional therapy had failed or it just wasn’t sufficient to guard against the likes of Wanda Maximoff. Ultron happened. Despite Steve’s stubbornness and Fury pulling a helicarrier out of his ass hundreds of people died, Bruce left and what was left of the Avengers trusted Wanda fucking Maximoff more than they trusted him. 

Even if that first flashback hadn’t been a flashback at all, his nightmares were back with a vengeance. Tony had… Well he wasn’t sure he’d classify it as good sense but he didn’t like making the same mistakes twice. He knew better than to let his nightmares take control of the armor again. Still that didn’t make it safe to sleep beside Pepper. Tony didn’t know what he’d do if he ever hurt her.

So after Tony left the Compound he drove back to the Tower. He called Pepper in Malibu and told her he’d be staying in New York until he’d finished fixing things at the Tower and then he got to work on a new project: B.A.R.F. Because the inside of his head clearly needed fixing much more desperately than any physical damage to the Tower. He also called in a construction crew and told them they could take their time. That way if Pepper, Rhodey or Happy checked up on his story it would hold water. 

As an engineer, Tony knew accurate data was key to diagnosing and repairing problems. His original intention with B.A.R.F. was to make something that could dig through the myriad of data trapped in his brain and present it objectively, without the bias of memory, so that he could review it and see where he’d gone wrong. What he ended up with didn’t quite work as intended. 

_‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi,’_ Tony thought but he couldn’t quit using the thing to imagine a world where things worked out. Where he didn’t create Ultron. Where he managed to let his team or his friends know that he wasn’t alright and they stayed. Where he ignored Killian instead of being a dick to the unstable lunatic. Where he stayed professional with Justin Hammer, instead of taking great joy in pointing out how much of an idiot the man truly was. Where he dug deeper into S.H.I.E.L.D. and figured out about HYDRA before Steve and Natasha made such a hash of it. Where he dug deeper into what Obie was up to before so many SI weapons ended up in the wrong hands. 

Where he was the sort of person who made Pepper happy instead of giving her worry-lines. It was easy, addictive, to go back in his memories and figure out where he could have done things differently, what he could have done to make everything better. But B.A.R.F. was his design, it was detailed oriented, based in specifics not generalities. He couldn’t specify a desired outcome, he had to introduce a change in his own behavior and then the simulation, based on the inputs from his memories and any external data he could feed it would play out the scenario with the alterations. That was what made it so addictive: Endless variations seeking the optimal outcome. 

The more he wanted to skew reality the more changes he had to introduce, going back further and further to establish the necessary foundation for the change. Tony tried to figure out how he could have improved his relationship with his father and found himself all the way back to age four, trying to figure out if building that circuit board was the right thing to do. Should he have built something else? Pretended to be closer to normal? At that point Tony had to acknowledge how ridiculously out of hand things were getting and scaled back his scope to sending his parents off that last night on a reasonably positive note.

To make the simulation as accurate as possible, Tony needed as much good data as possible. Tony knew most people would say he thought the world revolved around him but it wasn’t true. If it had been true, it wouldn’t have been so damned hard to get his father’s attention. Tony knew perfectly well that his father had more on his mind that night than his aggravation with his son. To have any shot at accurately modeling the effect of his changes, Tony knew he needed to find out what else was going on with his father. So he set FRIDAY to digging up everything she could find about what Howard Stark had been up to circa December 1991. 

The end result was thoroughly unexpected. FRIDAY found that the coroner who signed Howard and Maria Stark’s death certificates wasn’t the one who worked for the police. J.A.R.V.I.S., with his greater development, wouldn’t have flagged the discrepancy. J.A.R.V.I.S. would have had the experience not to consider it unusual for Obadiah Stane or Peggy Carter to bring in their own expert to do the autopsies. At the time, there had been many rumors that the cause of the accident had been drunk driving and, because it was Howard Stark, it had been covered up. Tony knew his father hadn’t been drunk that night, just furious, but there had been enough occasions in the past where Howard had driven drunk that Tony didn’t put it past Obadiah to have preemptively prepared for a cover up by bring in his own man. Like Tony, J.A.R.V.I.S. had experience with how Obadiah Stane operated and would have passed the detail over as insignificant but FRIDAY was so much younger and didn’t trust herself to judge when an abnormality didn’t matter. If she’d found it during Tony’s waking hours she would have asked him and he would have told her it was irrelevant and that would have been that but FRIDAY found the discrepancy less than an hour after Tony had gone to bed to sleep off the horrendous headaches caused by using B.A.R.F. and she decided to let him sleep, that it wouldn’t do any harm to chase the lead while he slept. If it didn’t pan out, it didn’t pan out.

FRIDAY followed the name on the coroner's report to S.H.I.E.L.D. A search of the data dumped online during S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall uncovered a second set of autopsy reports. While both listed blunt force trauma as the cause of death in Howard’s case, where the officially filed report stated that Maria’s neck had been broken in the accident, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secret report listed manual strangulation as the cause of death. 

It would take weeks more of digging by both FRIDAY and Tony but eventually they would unearth the whole story: The missing super soldier serum from the trunk of the car. Howard and Peggy Carter’s decades long dispute about attempting to recreate the serum. Howard finally going over Peggy’s head to the WSC to get approval. An earlier delivery that had been destroyed in transit and an ugly fight between Peggy and Howard in the middle of S.H.I.E.L.D. where Howard had insinuated that Peggy had deliberately sabotaging the serum entrusted to her. Peggy Carter’s protege, Nick Fury assuming control of the investigation into Howard’s death. And, years later, discovered in one of the Avengers’ raids on HYDRA bases, a requisition for the Winter Soldier to be delivered to New York, dated December 1991. The file, like everything else on the Winter Soldier, aka Sergeant James Buchanan (Bucky) Barnes, had been sent directly to one Captain Steve Rogers and that’s where the information had stopped. 

Tony stared at the documents. _‘S.H.I.E.L.D. closed ranks around Aunt Peggy. Dad was dead, what did they care about getting justice for him? Much easier and more convenient to just bury the murder than to go to the trouble of proving Aunt Peggy’s innocence and finding the real killer. And Mom? She was just collateral damage for everyone involved.’_

Tony brought up the HYDRA report again, Hill’s agents had earmarked it for Captain America’s attention and filed it away thirteen days before the raid on Strucker’s castle. “You know, I would have expected at least an ‘I’m sorry’ when he realized he was ‘keeping things from the team’,” Tony muttered to himself. “A call, ‘By the way Tony, my best friend- You know the one I keep borrowing your quinjet to hunt for? He murdered your parents’... Well, I suppose I can see how that might be a little awkward.”

“And there you have it, my girl,” Tony said to FRIDAY, his voice thick with fury. “History repeats. Howard Stark was an asshole and no use to anyone once he was dead, Mom was invisible and it’s just too damn inconvenient for everyone to worry about little details like their murder.”

“What do we do boss?” FRIDAY asked, sounding very uncertain. 

“Well, being retired from the Avengers and all, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of free time,” Tony said in a miserable attempt at sound casual. “Might as well do the world a favor and put down a rabid dog.”

Four months later Natasha pulled Steve into a conference room at the Compound. “We’re not the only ones searching for Barnes.”

“HYDRA?” Steve asked worriedly.

“Stark.” Natasha replied. “He must have found out.”

“We don’t know that it was Bucky,” Steve protested. “And even if it was, Hydra had control of his mind. It’s not his fault.”

“We aren’t a hundred percent sure and if Stark actually went looking for proof he very well might have found it,” Natasha warned. “He will find Barnes before us. Stark has access to resources we don’t and there’s not a computer system on Earth that he can’t get into if he sets his mind to it. He knows everything we know.”

“So what do we do?” Steve asked.

“I have a few ideas,” Natasha replied cagily. _‘Steve’s too much of a blunt object but if I approach it from the right angle I might be able to use Vision, Rhodes or Potts to keep tabs on Stark. I mean we’re all very worried about a mutual friend. Wouldn’t want him to do anything he might regret later.'_

Natasha’s strategy eventually paid off. It wasn’t difficult to get Rhodes and Pepper worried about Tony. While they were initially reluctant to say too much, since Tony obviously wasn’t talking to her, a few reminders of that time when Tony had hidden that he was dying coupled with his current secretiveness and they eventually chose to pool resources with her to try to figure out what was going on. When Tony found what he was looking for they still almost missed it. 

The country house, the location of which they acquired from FRIDAY, wasn’t at all the sort of place Steve had expected to find Bucky but the door was swinging crookedly on one hinge and there were scorch marks outlining the silhouette of the Iron Man armor showing that someone had tried pretty hard to keep Tony at bay. 

Warily they ventured inside. “Two heat signatures,” Rhodes said. “This way. You know that Tony knows we’re following him, right?”

Sam looked surprised, “I thought we hacked FRIDAY?”

Rhodes sighed, “I’m actually Tony’s friend, I’d never risk hurting one of his AIs like that. I talked her into telling us where to find Tony, by convincing her that she needed backup to properly look out for him. If she’s anything like JARVIS she confessed, just to let Tony know that she thought he was far enough out of line to call someone in.”

Forgetting caution, Steve pushed past Rhodes and burst into a home theater. Iron Man stood in the center of the room, a charged repulsor pressed to the skull of a bound man who knelt at his feet, long greasy hair falling forward to obscure his face.

“Tony, it wasn’t him,” Steve pled.

“I beg to differ,” Tony said coldly.

“Tones, rules of war man,” Rhodes said coming up behind Steve. “He’s your prisoner.”

Tony pointed to the screen that dominated the front of the room, dozens of overlapping windows opened showing the Winter Soldier’s kills. The centerpiece was the murder of Howard and Maria Stark. “Sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things,” Tony sneered.

“HYDRA was controlling him.” Subtly Steve readied himself to throw the shield.

“Oh relax, Cap-cicle,” Tony spat. He yanked his prisoner’s head back revealing an older grizzled face that Steve didn’t recognize. “Old Yeller actually knows something about covering his tracks. His former handler on the other hand? Well, he leveraged his ruthlessness in using your buddy into career advancement. Figured he’d amassed enough power to be untouchable in his retirement. 

“Pro-Tip Rogers: Stop looking for Bucky Barnes, maybe he didn’t die the moment he fell off that train but he is long dead now.” He gestured to the screen where the Winter Soldier was strangling Maria Stark, carefully not looking at it. “Or is that your friend?”

Steve squared his jaw, “I can get him back.”

Tony snorted. “I have to admit, when I saw the autopsy reports,” a picture of Howard Stark’s shattered face appeared on the screen, “-The one you, wait that was Aunt Peggy, you just hid the murder weapon.- I hated Barnes. But read ‘the asset’ a couple hundred times in various HYDRA reports and you forget that they’re talking about something that used to be a human being. I spent too much of my life building weapons to hate them. I might hate what people do with them…” 

Tony’s eyes flickered towards Wanda briefly. The screen switch to show the Winter Soldier putting his metal fist through a small girl’s face. Wanda turned away looking queasy.

Tony kicked the bound man lightly, “This piece of shit did a lot worth hating with his human-shaped weapon.” He watched Steve closely as pictures of the Winter Soldier’s messier kills kept flashing across the screen, interspersed with recordings of Barnes in HYDRA’s chair. “He liked keeping souvenirs, like some demented serial killer. Home movies, so he can watch your old pal being put through his paces over and over again. He liked the kills up close and personal. Maybe there is something of your Bucky left in him, this guy had to put his brain through the blender three times more often than any of his other handlers. Well, after they first broke him anyway. Or maybe there’s another reason this guy had to wipe your buddy’s mind so often. I mean, some people get turned on by weapons.”

Steve jerked forward, throwing the shield. Tony stepped back, watching dispassionately as it decapitated his prisoner then smashed the screen behind him. In the shocked silence that followed the bound body slowly toppled. The head came to rest against the front wall, empty eyes facing them.

“Hey Rhodey, looks like someone else could use that lecture you were warming up to give me.” Tony said as he walked away.

Rhodes caught him in the front yard. “What the hell?!”

Tony gestured to the scorching on the porch, “Piece of shit surrendered as soon as I got past his unwelcome. And Rogers is a lying, self righteous, hypocrite. He’s known about my parents for years. I decided they deserved each other.”

“And Barnes? I know how you decommissioned SI’s stray weapons.”

Tony shrugged, “Rogers couldn’t find him because he was looking for his Bucky. But I couldn’t find him looking for the Winter Soldier. Maybe there’s something human left in him… Maybe, least enough question to give him the chance to prove me wrong.”

 

**+1)Perception**

Tony looked between Rogers’ self-serving apology to the phone where Ross was ranting about a break in at the Raft. “FRIDAY, odds that Rogers brought his pet assassin along? Oh never mind, they’re good enough.”

Fifteen minutes later, somewhere in the North Atlantic. “Hank’ll kill me if I lose the suit,” Scott Lang whined as he joined the others in the open area between the cells.

Clint hurried to Wanda and loosened the buckles on her straight jacket. “Hold on Darlin’, I’ll have you out of that collar in a moment.”

Steve punched through the panel outside of Sam’s cell while Bucky stood guard at the entrance with a semi-automatic. “What happened in Siberia?” Sam asked.

A laser lanced across the room piercing Bucky’s chest, it cut through his body like butter as he fell. “Bucky!” Steve exclaimed throwing himself at his fallen friend. The others ducked for cover from the unknown assailant. Clint scrambled to finish unlocking the collar restraining Wanda’s powers.

Iron Man stepped out of the shadows. “Your gear’s two floors up, fifth door on the left,” Tony said as he opened the face plate.

“Why?” Steve cried.

“He killed my mom.”

“He was being controlled by HYDRA!”

“I don’t care.”

Steve scooped up the gun Bucky had dropped and shot Tony in the face.

For a moment everything was frozen then Wanda stood up. Looking from Bucky to Tony she said, “Oh, I see. All those times you told me revenge was wrong what you truly meant was YOU didn’t think MY parents were worth killing for.”

 

… Which didn’t happen.

**Author's Note:**

> #5 is pretty borderline but Team!Cap tells me that Tony reacting badly is inexcusable no matter what the provocation. So same goes for Steve. Also working around the premise of the circumstances under which Tony is told/finds out gets worse with each scenario and his reaction gets worse each time so the break between his reaction justifies hiding the information and his reaction does not justify hiding the information isn’t completely clean. #5 is Tony finding out with no support while in a really bad frame of mind.
> 
> The titles of each segment are not used in the proper in order but they all come from the SPIKES acronym for how to break bad news.


End file.
